This invention relates to electronic educational products and more specifically to speaking electronic educational products.
In recent years there have become available a number of electronic educational learning aid products, an early example of these being the Little Professor* mathematics learning aid. This product presents mathematical problems to an operator by means of a visual display and the operator enters attempted solutions to the problem via a keyboard. The product then indicates to the operator the correctness of his response. In addition there has appeared a series of learning aids which have the additional capability of communicating to the operator by means of electronically synthesized speech. Examples of these include the Speak & Spell*, Speak & Math*, and Speak & Read* electronic learning aids. FNT *trademark of Texas Instruments Incorporated.
More recently there has been disclosed in Freeman U.S. Pat. No. 4,337,375, entitled "Manually Controllable Data Reading Apparatus for Speech Synthesizers", issued June 29, l982, a new type of system which has the capability of communicating to the operator by means of electronically synthesized speech. This system is distinguished by the fact that the words that are to be spoken are identified to the system by the operator through the use of an optical code reading instrument. The code, which may comprise a bar code of the type that has been used by grocers on certain of their products, may typically appear on the pages of a book below a line of corresponding printed text. Thus, an operator, who may typically be a child seeking to gain reading facility, when he encounters words or phrases that he does not recognize, may pass the optical reading instrument over the corresponding coded material thereby causing the system to speak the word or phrase. It will be seen therefore that such a system comprises a powerful learning aid in that it will selectively provide for the student verbalization of those words and phrases which he does not recognize in the printed text. It will be appreciated that a learning aid with such capability may have application to students of a wide variety of ages including preschool students.
A problem, particularly with students of younger ages, is to provide systems which will not only be effective in imparting the educational content, but which will also provide an enjoyable experience so as to maintain the interest of the student. Thus it is advantageous to provide a code reading speaking learning aid of the type described above, which has a plurality of modes of operation so as to provide the student with variety and stimulation in the educational experience.
In certain circumstances it is particularly advantageous to provide such an electronic learning aid with a means for generating sound effects. The electronic learning aid may be provided with prestored speech data in order to cause the speech synthesizer to generate the required sound effects. However, the memory space required for storing all of the desired sound effects quickly becomes prohibitively large. The desired sound effects may be divided into a series of elements of nonspoken sound which may be called in a sequence determined by a particular sound effect code. Such a system greatly reduces the required storage space within the apparatus, however such a system may not provide sufficient variation of sound effects and may require extremely long codes in order to generate an extended sound effect.